Get out that list of countries that Trump has insulted and/or threatened and add Panama to it. I suppose we should be grateful. At least he’s shut up about annexing Canada for the moment. I’m sure Justin Trudeau is grateful for the respite, he’d probably prefer to have a normal holiday without the Lunatic l’Orange bedeviling him Xmas week. But the Panamanians are not so lucky. No, Trump has them in his crosshairs now and it’s as ludicrous as you would suppose.
He's stark raving mad. It's not our country. They let us build it a LONG time ago. We've benefited from it greatly as have many other countries. It belongs to Panama.
— Decoding Fox News (@DecodingFoxNews) December 22, 2024
It is unclear what spurred Trump’s invective about the canal. While China has increased its presence in Latin America over the last two decades — and a Hong Kong-based company administers the two ports on each end of the canal — no Chinese commercial or government entity actually has any direct role in managing the flow of vessels through the critical waterway.
The canal is administered by an independent Panamanian government agency, the Panama Canal Authority, and China has made no public gestures towards buying the canal or increasing its footprint in the country in recent months.
Meanwhile, Panama recently elected José Raúl Mulino as president. Mulino has pledged to bring Panama closer to the United States.
The U.S. signed a treaty with the newly independent state of Panama in 1903 that allowed it to develop a long-desired canal through the isthmus which would connect the Pacific and Atlantic oceans and pay Panama from the revenues generated from the canal. In exchange, the U.S. would guarantee the neutrality of the canal and control land on both sides of the waterway by the Panamanian government. This region, known as the Panama Canal Zone, was administered by the United States and U.S. law applied to the inhabitants of the region.
But after decades of tensions around the canal, the Carter administration signed two treaties in 1977 with Panama’s military dictator, Omar Torrijos, to transition control of the vital shipping passage over to Panama. Under the terms of those treaties, Panama would gain control of the canal by 1999 and the U.S. would retain the right to defend the canal from any threat to its neutrality.
Analysts, however, do not believe that those provisions in the treaty would allow for the United States to legally retake control of the canal.
Aye, there’s the rub. The United States is the top user of the Panama Canal. But China is the primary source of products going through the Colón Free Trade Zone and its increasing presence in and around the Canal has made the waterway a flashpoint for U.S.-China competition over spheres of influence. China’s influence in the Panama Canal has only grown since 2017 when then-president Carlos Varela severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan and recognized China.
This could get contentious and fast. Trump is blowing smoke and bellowing in the wind, as usual. I don’t know if he talks to legal experts before he spouts off like this, or if he just wants to have a new way to flex for the Chinese and all they’re doing is laughing and rolling their eyes like everybody else.
What Trump totally misses with respect to the Chinese is that they play the long game. That’s key to their national character. Trump, on the other hand, has no concept of a long game. He’s only interested in strutting and peacocking while doing a short term grift.
This is not going to go well.
Trump’s idea of the long game is tomorrow.
All this tough-guy posturing and bully-boy threatening is to feed Trumpler’s imbecilic MAGAt mob some red meat, and thereby distract the rest of us from what’s going on within his already-chaotic “administration.” And it feeds his fragile needy ego, makes him feel like a macho man while having his hair and makeup done in the morning.
Sorry Ukraine…we can’t help you any longer…we are at war…with Canada, Mexico, and Panama. It’s difficult to defend home soil now that women, gays, transsexuals, and democrats have been drummed out of the military. We’ll get back to you…maybe after our president ELECT drops a nuke on each country. Oh…I forgot to mention…we’re a little short of manpower since soliders,(‘are cutting us down’, referencing the Kent State shooting of unarmed college kids in 1970…memorialized by the song Ohio), are posted in every city to keep these traitors in line, and by having to shoot our own citizens because they don’t recognize Trump as installed by God. If only the godless jews hadn’t killed our savior and invented space lasers. We’ll get rid of these vermin soon enough and then see what happens to the former countries of Canada, Mexico, and Panama. Praise be to God for giving us the weapons to pulverize these sinners…just as Christ teaches in the Trump Bible. Amen brothers in arms.